Forgive me
by Lost Gallifrey
Summary: In the shattered ruins of London, Shepard discovers there are far worse things lurking in the rubble than the memories of what could have been.
1. Chapter 1

There is a reaper passing the twisted remnants of the Sol relay. Even at that distance Shepard can hear it, it broadcasts memories of horrific continent spanning slaughters, and a faint wail of regret~the last deep, keening regret of an ancient people re-purposed into its terrible metal shell. Like a song heard through static it sings of an endless savannah beneath a red moon, it sings of a reaping, a harvest; and the death of worlds. Caught in the wailing dirge are flashes of newer times, of millions caught in dreadnaught fire as Cipritine roiled in flames and Shepard closes her eyes, wishing just once that would block out the endless, sickening song of destruction.

Shepard notices that nobody speaks to her anymore. Humans duck their heads, stuttering out their nervous thanks to the cracked, heat scorched ground at her feet; turians refuse to bow to anyone and simply focus their intense, avian eyes somewhere above her head. Her eyes, lit now with reaper tech, fascinate the salarians, but even they usually only manage to wring their supple hands and turn away.

Walking through the decimated rubble of London has become a daily ritual, a mindless self flagellation cunningly disguised as exercise. From the hospital to the barracks, from there past the cleared ground and the mass graves...into the city to a street where the charred pavement had run like molasses and settled as smoky, ash stained glass.

The air is thick with the stench of unclaimed dead, the cleanup crews haven't made it out this far. The burned out shells of military vehicles lie scattered like a child's toys, the occasional brave scavenger scrabbling through the remnants. The rank smell of burned decay sticks in the back of Shepard's throat like heavy regret, ash tainted and impossible to swallow.

A few more steps and a tiresome scrabble up a half-shattered barricade and she is there, staring down the twisted street to where, just a month ago, everything ended. The silent, blackened stone stretches to the site where the conduit beam had touched down. Viewed in the day, without the hellish light of burning cities it seems almost peaceful. So hard to think of the dead here, of sweet, loyal Tali, so excited about returning to Rannoch, and Garrus….Shepard doubles over, nerve stripping grief burning in the cybernetics of her eyes.

She can't cry anymore, a restriction of function rather than choice. The upgrades that allow her to hear and control the reapers no longer allow for that simple biological release, but the grief burns in her stomach like hot lead. Garrus….Shepard closes her eyes and tries to remember what he felt like, how he liked to nestle his head against her neck while he slept, the way he would arch and hiss with appreciation as she took him in her hand, the feel of fever-hot scales and skin against her. A keening cry bursts from her mouth and Shepard clasps a hand over her mouth to stifle the building scream that wells in her throat.

Shepard's grief whispers against the reapers still in range, and they voice her grief with a klaxon barrage of fury and mindless resentment. Small flickers of awareness echo through the ruined city, the surviving reaper forces, their tortured minds flickering against hers like dying fireflies.

Shepard tries not to listen to them, freed from the reapers that controlled them they wallowed and died in a constant state of confused pain. Teams of sharpshooters were their only hope; the reaper implants wouldn't let them die a natural death~but forced their bodies into a parody of life until the quick mercy of a bullet ended their torment.

One was closer than Shepard expected, its mind broadcasting a litany of confusion, pain and grief that rattled against her consciousness like a handful of gravel. She can hear it moving now, and drops a hand to the pistol at her side. The mental scrabble of anguish and grief gave way to the physical rasp of metal-infused flesh on stone as the twisted form of a marauder dragged itself from the rubble, ruined eyes fixed on her face.


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard freezes , her pistol a solid, reasuring weight against her palm. The marauder continues to stare as it hauls itself in jerky steps through the shattered landscape; tilting its head from side to side, voicing the typical nonstop babble of slurred turian dialect and untranslatable metallic feedback.

Dancing in the back of Shepard's mind she can hear its pre-programmed hostility blend with confusion and an overlay of all too organic pain. Its been injured Shepard notices, a bad shot from one of the cleanup crews had left a shattered ruin where its reaper-augmented shinbone used to be. Its bleeding a mix of dark oily fluid, and the familiar dark blue hemocyanin of the turian it used to be.

Stepping back to line up a clean shot, Shepard distantly reminds herself to reprimand whoever it was that wounded a creature as dangerous as this and then let it get away. Every one of the reaper forces allowed to live was a threat to the fragile remnants of the civilian society they were trying so hard to rebuild.

The marauder screeches out a grating threat as Shepard brings the carnifex up to shoulder level. Random flickers of thoughts batter feebly against her reaper implants like dying moths against a light; flashes of confusion, anger, regret~the creeping blackness of reaper control that stole self and spirit. In the middle of the scattered projections a single image, held steady like a shipwrecked man clings to driftwood~her own face.

For a moment she thinks she is simply seeing herself through the marauder's eyes, it takes a few moments to realize that the flickering image is of another her, before the end, before she made a deal with the devil and sacrificed her own humanity. In her minds eye she sees the memory-her laugh silently, an un-scarred mouth forming the words "I love you".

Shepard remembers the moment above Alchera, when her oxygen failed and she was falling, falling for miles into the blue frozen arc of the planet. It feels the same now, that same sick realization as her diaphragm tightens on empty lungs and she can feel herself falling. Only this time she knows the impact is going to hurt, no fiery re-entry to singe the pain from her nervous system~this time she's going to feel every bone-crushing moment of agony. She forces the reaper visions down in her mind, swallows down the bile in her throat and raises glowing eyes to meet those of the marauder standing in the rubble.

For a few seconds Shepard thinks she might have been mistaken. Her mind shies away and all she can see is the uncountable perversions the reapers have wreaked on the turian in front of her; but as it utters another metallic chatter and steps closer, her eyes catch up with what her mind already knew. Even with the bottom jaw and mandibles sheared away, the arc of blue colony paint across the cheek plating and nose is unmistakable. Where it's not overlayed with twisted cybernetic enhancements the visible hide is a suede brown, plating gleaming silver in the fading evening light. The scars on his right cheek are still there, torn away in places now~replaced with metal and wire, and for a delerious, hopeful moment Shepard half expects him to laugh and quip "nobody would give me a mirror, how bad is it?"

"Oh god Garrus," Shepard can barely hear her own voice over the roaring in her ears , "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Shepard's finger tightened slowly on the trigger of her pistol, her rational mind knew this had to be done, this wasn't her friend, her lover, this was a reaper-parading around in a puppet shell. A perversion to heap unfair grief on the living. As if aware of her silent struggle, the marauder hauled itself a staggering step closer, a steady stream of grating babble issuing from its ruined jaw. Then it stopped, tilting its head to the side and rasped out "Seh-arrrd?"

Shepard had faced armies of geth, Saren, the collectors and lately the reapers without the fear she felt at hearing the slurred attempt at her name spoken by the brutalized remains of her former lover. For the first time she could remember, Commander Shepard, hero of the citadel, dropped her gun from nerveless fingers and fled.


	3. Chapter 3

It takes Shepard three days to gather the strength of will to return to the conduit site. She busies herself helping the burial crews during the day, still half-healed injuries protesting as she hooks a heavy gaff under countless ravaged bodies and levers them into the mass pit-graves. The silence of the other workers, dead eyed with grief and overwork, suits her.

The exhausted cleanup teams bring in their kills at dusk, twisted forms piled haphazard on the makeshift skids used to transport them. Shepard cannot help the surge of dread/hope that rises in her with every marauder corpse that is hauled in; she waits for that flash of familiar blue colony paint that will signify that she can rebury herself in honest, bonedeep grief again. The work is brutal, and yet she relishes it, the burn of unhealed muscle weave reminds her that she is awake, not curled up on her military issue cot in the dingy pre-fab she now calls home, as her traitorous sleeping mind drags her through yet another bitter memory.

_Shepard rubs a hand over her eyes, the numbers on the requisition form are starting to blur. Garrus is a warm, limp presence behind her, sprawled out with an outstretched talon brushing against her thigh. She lets the datapad slip to the floor, turning to run a gentle hand up the powerful muscles in his thigh, across the heavy, protruberant hip joint and the softer hide in the dip of his waist. He twitches then, muscles shivering under her hand and he slits a blue eye at her._

" Aren't you supposed to be working" he rumbled, his voice a sleepy burr.

"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping" Shepard quips back with a tired grin, laughing as Garrus arches in a full body stretch, then sits up to run a blue tongue along her clavicle and throat.

"_I was, but my superior officer seems to require my presence, and who am I to disobey an order?" his mandibles flare into a familiar and cocky grin, as his rough hand skates up her ribs to cup the warm weight of her breast._

In the beginning Shepard had found his body strange, all lean muscles and metalic plating that didn't react as a human male would. It hadnt taken them long, after the first akward fumbles, to figure out what pleasured the other. She loves the way he curles the wet heat of his long tongue around her nipple, feeling it tighten against the smooth plating of his lower jaw. Loves the way he voices an appreciative growl/hiss as she scrapes her nails across the sensitive hide of his abdomen, pressing a teasing palm up against the pubic plating between his thighs. She presses up against him, feeling the sudden rush of heat as his plates retract and his hardness presses urgently against her stomach.

Shepard throws her head back with a wordless cry as Garrus curls talons around the swell of her buttocks and guides her down onto him. Overhead the galaxy flashes past in a blur of FTL blue as they move together, as in synch now as they are in battle; a single unit with a single carnal objective. Shepard feels her stomach tighten as her nerves sing her closer to release, it takes her a moment to realise the hands on her hips are cold. Frozen in the blue light of the fishtanks Shepard looks down at her lover, watches as his eyes dim, conduits and wires snake from his skin like worms feasting on rotten fruit. His hands, moments ago warm against her, are limp, fingers replaced with twisted, blackened metal. She screams, trying to pull away as the thing beneath her arches in a terrible parody of arousal; its glowing cybernetic eyes meet hers as its ruined jaw grates out her name…"Seh-arrrd!"

Shepard comes awake with a garbled shriek, her body tense and quivering with adrenaline. To her shame she can still feel the pinging of her arousal. The familiar ache and wetness at the juncture of her thighs, her body demanding release even as her mind twisted away from the horror it had produced. Curling up on her side Shepard digs fingers into her scalp, trying to remember the feel of careful talons preening through her hair; and far away, on the surface of Mars, a downed and dying reaper gives voice to her grief and fear.

Shepard can hear him within the reaper tech of her mind long before she can see him. The indoctrinated had lost the guiding force of their existence the moment the reapers abandoned their fight, their minds shattered by the vastness of the reapers that guided them are now left to broadcast their confusion, pain and hostile grief. Close to the street leading to the conduit Shepard can only recognize two indoctrinated minds: a hulking cannibal gulps at the festering flesh of a decomposing comrade in the shadows of a decimated law office, an activity forced on it by the remnants of reaper technology while its batarian mind gibbers an insane protest. The presence she recognizes as Garus flickers through her mind like a distorted echo, a mental scream of pain and anger underplayed with a kind of formless confusion and flickering flashes of memories.

She finds him slumped about half way down the street to the conduit site, crouched down with his shattered leg twisted to the side, reconstructed, over-sized steel talons pawing repeatedly at something on the slagged, glass-like pavement. Shepard watches as he manages to lift whatever he's scrabbling at in once dexterous talons, he cradles it against his cheek, groaning out a slurred babble of turian dialect. Eventually the object slips free, clattering back to the ground, and he paws after it again with a hopeless determination.

"Hey" Shepard winces as her voice comes out in a hoarse whisper, "Garrus, its me, its Shepard."

At her voice the marauder lunges to its feet, back arching as the pre-programed wave of dark energy forces an unnatural shielding interface from the leads implanted in its skull. Shepard can feel the surge of hostility like a black wave through her implants, that reaper programed impulse to kill, but it wavers and fades almost before she can react. They stare at each other for a long moment, then Garrus simply folds his good leg and slumps back down to the ground.

"Ree-ssssa" he mutters in that ruined metalic voice, tilting his head to stare up at her, "Ree-sssa Seh-arrrd?"

Shepard almost has to force herself not to run again, instead she pushes herself to walk forward, hands held out to her sides, mouth stretched into what she hopes is the reassuring smile she is trying for, and not the rictus grimace she suspects it might be.

"Yeah, that's me, Reesha Shepard, in the not quite human flesh," Shepard grimaces at her own flippancy. She cautiously eases herself down to sit cross legged across from him, carefully uholstering her pistol and resting it against her knees. "What is that?" Shepard asks, gesturing to the scrap of metal that Garrus has gone back to mindlessly pawing at.

Garrus seems to hesitate, head jerking up so the glowing cybernetics of his eyes meet hers, a low grating keen vibrating in his half synthetic throat. He jerkily offers the scrap to her, folded in an awkwardly fisted talon. It's a blackened strut of some light metal, warped by heat and trauma; Shepard rubs at the crust of ash and what appears to be dried blood, until her fingers find the familiar irregularities. Butler, Weaver, the scored patch where Sidonis used to be written…and she clenches the remains of Garrus's sniping visor so hard is scores deep into her palm, a welcome stab of pain to distract herself from this nightmare reality.

"You never wanted to take this off" Shepard whispered thickly, "even that first night, before the relay….you wore it, even then." It hasn't even been a year Shepard realized sickly, relishing the bite of a metal sliver into her thumb. Less than a year since that first, tentative foray to this…..crouching in the wreckage of her homeworld with the ruins of the one person she loved more than anything.

As though oblivious to her grief, Garrus simply bumps an insistent talon at her hand until she silently relinquishes the twisted pieces of his visor, watching numbly as he presses them against the remains of his face~keening his grief and pain in a garble of reaper static.__


	4. Chapter 4

"They told me you died," Garrus raised his head again at Shepard's voice, shattered visor spinning from his clumsy, maimed talons to clatter to the street. "W..when the reaper beam hit, they told me you died…that's why I didn't look for you. How did this happen, Garrus? How could this have happened?!" Shepard realizes her voice has risen sharply, tense with a rising hysteria that chokes in her throat. Its all she can do to gag down the tide of grief that threatens to swamp her; its as effective as flapping her hands at a hurricane, and unshed tears blur her vision.

Garrus simply stares back at her with unblinking cybernetic eyes, one hand frozen in mid grab for his visor. Shepard tries to reach out with the cold threads of reaper tech in her mind, bumping clumsily against the nodes implanted in the turian's skull that left him open to reaper control. Memories flood past her like motes of dust in a sunbeam, twisting in a patternless chaos, mixed in with the unshakable indoctrination of the reaper nanites that twist through his brain.

"Show me" Shepard whispers, daring to brush an outstretched hand against the ragged colony paint below the glowing optics that have replaced the eyes she loved. "Please, show me what happened" she pushes again at the indoctrination nodes in his mind, feeling a flash of shame when he immediately capitulates, unable to deny the reaper part of her.

Memories well up into her mind like blood welling from a cut, it soaks into her brain, weaving through the reaper synapses with a speed that leaves her breathless. She can see flashes of that hellish night, fleets burning in the sky like macabre shooting stars, soldiers twisting in the red light of reaper fire~their bodies highlighted by fire, flickering briefly before scattering to ash. She feels the anguish of watching Tali fall, and the sick-hot pain as the same explosion that took her flings Garrus against a downed tank with a spine shattering snap. She sees herself as he saw her, through blood dimmed eyes and smoke, running for that arching pillar of blue light…..never looking back. He had cried out for his family at first, curled and panting in the burning shadow of the Alliance Mako as the medical biometrics in his visor screeched a warning and the medigel ran to empty. As the first marauder scrambled over the wreckage its her name he howls in panic and despair.

Shepard can see herself, a silhouette framed by the shimmering light of the conduit. She hadn't heard him then~ hadn't heard him cry out for her, desperate and agonized, until steel talons ended his voice with a sharp jerk. Her form faded into the flare of conduit light of his mind at the same second the first reaper node wormed through the ruins of his eyes, cutting new neural pathways as he weakly gasped a wet protest.

Shepard pulled back then, her human mind shying away from the horror of those brutal final moments. She curls forward, arms clasped around her stomach, wailing a wordless cry of protest as bile burns in her mouth with searing heat. '_You realize this plan has me walking into hell too_' he had once said, and Shepard realizes with a sick horror that he has done exactly that; he had followed her into hell, and she had left him there to face its horrors alone. She is just starting to straighten up when she feels the cold scrape of metal against her scalp.

Shepard remembered all the quiet evenings spent with Garrus in the solitude of her cabin aboard the Normandy. She would slide her fingers across the smooth cartilage of his fringe and the soft hide beneath it, smiling at the way he would press his head into her hand with a sigh of sleepy contentment. He would always try to reciprocate, carding careful talons through the auburn strands as he pressed his forehead into the crook of her neck.

The jerky movement of the cold metal against her scalp is familiar, and Shepard looks up slowly. Garrus is still watching her with mindlessly blank reaper eyes. One misshapen claw still clutches at the ruins of his visor, but the other scrapes clumsily through the disarray of her hair. Even though half of her wants to back away Shepard reacts the only way she can, she slides a careful hand along the remnants of his cheek, avoiding the raw looking entry points of the glowing cybernetic implants. She tries not to flinch as her hand tracks along the broken edges of bone, where metal grafts replace the natural curve of cartilage, she wonders if he can even feel her hand anymore, but he gives a soft metallic sigh and presses the ruins of his head against her hand.

" I'm so sorry" Shepard whispers, as her fingers slide over the twist of wires at the back of his skull, "so sorry I left you to face this alone." She gently cups a hand under what remains of his jaw, raising his glowing eyes to meet her own, "please Garrus, please... forgive me." As ever he does not hesitate, rasping out a dissonant "yeh-esss" he leans forward to press the cold metal of his browplate against Shepard's forehead.

After a while Garrus slowly inches closer, curling against Shepard in a heartbreaking mockery of the intimacy they used to share. They stay like that for what feels like hours, long enough for Shepard's legs to protest with cold induced cramps where the chill from the asphalt penetrates her fatigues.

Closing her eyes, Shepard can almost imagine that the sternal keel that presses against her is warm and rough-not cold, ash speckled metal. She presses her face to a patch of intact hide on the side of his neck, wishing she could smell his sharp, earthy scent instead of the dark mix of burned metal, old blood, and charred flesh.

"I can fix this," Shepard whispers, ignoring the way Garrus jerkily shakes his head. "Come back with me, we'll find a way to fix this, we always do! Chakwas is working at a hospital here~she's used to patching you up remember! " Hope floods her mind for the first time in weeks, blocking out the way Garrus clumsily pulls back from her touch. Her hands, insistent now, skate over the augmented joints of his shoulders, "we can go away, somewhere warm like you wanted, just the two of us! Shepard and Vakarian!" A desperate, bright laugh bursts from her, borne of sickly desperate hope.

Garrus shakes his head violently, dislodging her hands as his mind broadcasts a static crackle of exhausted pain and anger through the reaper nodes in her brain. Its like being drenched with scalding water, and Shepard whimpers as that heated sending dashes the embryo of her dream with abrupt cruelty.

"N…n..nno Seh-aarrd, nno mmmo-rre!" Even though Garrus no longer needs oxygen,he breaths in irregular gasping pants, trying to force slurred speech out past the destruction of invasive wiring in his throat. "Puh-rrreeesse, nno mmo-rre" his voice trails off into a grating wail of muttered feedback. He scrapes hard at his face with a heavy steel talon, keening a low moan as his unnatural shielding stalls the movement with a flicker of kinetic energy.

Shepard lets her hands fall limply to her knees, the coil of hope in her stomach dying into a cold knot of dread. It had been a selfish hope she realized, a desperate grab for a 'what should have been' rather than the horror of what actually was. Numbly she watched Garrus paw with frantic, desperate repetition at the exposed nodes in his skull, each movement defeated by the defences the reapers had forced into his body.

"We were supposed to meet at the bar," Shepard chokes out, "we were supposed to meet at the damned bar. It wasn't supposed to be like this, we did everything right, how can it be like this?!"

Garrus cocks his head at her, all the torments of hell in those bright soulless eyes, and Shepard knows she will never get past this. All the men lost, family, friends, the millions that burned while the crucible was built, she carries them like a lodestone;…but this, she realizes, this is what is going to end her. She digs the heels of her hands into the cybernetics of her eyes, pressing until the pain twists through her head, dulling the sounds of distant reapers. She wishes she could stay blind, curl up in the darkness of her mind and just….not be here.

"Reee-sssa? " Garrus rasps softly, making Shepard flinch again at that garbled, shattered voice. He hitches himself closer to her, the shattered bones and metal of his damaged leg sliding across the pavement with a dull screech. Somethings bumps heavily against her knees, and the moment she lowers her hands from her eyes Garrus fumbles something heavy and cold into them.

For a moment Shepard cannot move, only instinctive muscle memory telling her numb mind what Garrus is awkwardly folding her uncooperative hands around. She stares straight ahead, nerveless fingers cradling the carnifex pistol as Garrus buries his head in her shoulder, one talon forcing her fingers around the trigger while he gasps "Reee-ssssa, puh-rreeessse" in a low groan against her neck.


	5. Chapter 5

Shepard was tired. It wasn't the kind of tired that can be repaired by rest, but a bone-deep, soul-sick kind of exhaustion that slithered through her body like worms in old meat. Too much loss, too much death, too many moments that should have happened-and yet never could built up in her bones like a slow poison. A deep resentment stirred in the back of her mind, the slow stir of anger that mirrored the worry that Garrus had voiced so long ago: _nothing ever goes right, and I wanted...of all the things in the galaxy, I wanted this to go right._

The slab of concrete she was leaning up against seeped cold into Shepard's back as she watched a sinking crimson sun arc through the smoky haze of endless fires. Part of her wanted to reach up and grab the sun itself, bring time to a halt and just stay here forever.

Garrus lay heavy against her, his head an achingly familiar weight as he nestles in under her chin. One arm thrown awkwardly across her midriff, talon still fisted tightly around the ruined visor frame, steel talons tightening and relaxing against the metal with a soft rhythmic grinding. Shepard passes her hand softly over the grafted metal of his fringe, trying to ignore his occasional convulsive jerk as waves of dark energy trigger an involuntary muscle spasm.

Shepard tells him of how the war ended, the plans the races have to rebuild the relay network. Of the mad scramble to set up industrial greenhouses to force-grow the food needed to feed the two-hundred thousand Hierarchy troops still in orbit. Garrus had given an odd metallic chirp when Shepard told him of Eve's pregnancy, and how, once the comm-network had been repaired she had announced to a startled Wrex that she was carrying twins. Even in the horror that surrounded her, Shepard couldn't keep the smile from her face as she recounted Wrex's gruff excitement and pride; fatherhood would suit him well. Desperate words poured out of her, each one buying her a few more seconds to not think about the cold weight of the pistol clasped in her right hand. A few more seconds to close her eyes and imagine warm sand and the soft roll of waves, before the cold reality of the situation raised its ugly head again.

As shadows lengthened, a turian patrol flight passed overhead, the fading light flickering over their arc shapes like sunlight on water. Garrus tracks their flight with a fixed gaze, rasping a sad sort of keen from deep in his chest; and Shepard tells him about his family. She tells him they are safe, evacuated to the turian colony on Invictus; but she cannot tell him how his sister's shrill keen of grief echoed through the comm-unit as his father stoically thanks her for the call, grief blurring the shaking harmonics of his voice.

Eventually her voice trails away, and they cling to each other in silence until Garrus presses an insistent talon over the dreaded weight of the pistol, pressing into her hand hard enough to sting.

"I know" she whispers "I know….oh god"

The controls of her omnitool feel like second nature, as Shepard flicks through the menu with shaking fingers. Every movement feels like she is struggling through tar, every nerve of her being resenting each terrible twitch of her fingers. It feels like the ultimate betrayal...the ultimate mercy and she gasps back a shuddering sob as the slight tingle of the overload charge builds. She can't look at his face, see her own terrible guilt reflected in that blank stare, so she folds her hand gently over Garrus's eyes, pressing her lips to his fractured browridge for those few, precious seconds before the charge hits.

Garrus arches in her arms and screams a grating shriek as the electricity arches into the optics and nodes in his skull, disrupting the implant connections and dragging down the enforced kinetic shielding with a sizzle. As he lies, panting and dazed against her neck, Shepard hoarsely whimpers "I love you" before she presses the muzzle of her pistol against the now unshielded gap in his sternum plating and pulls the trigger.

"Shhh, I've got you" Shepard folds her arms around him then, rocking him slightly as he groans a soft babble of unintelligible feedback. He grasps uselessly at her, shivering as his blood slicks her Alliance uniform with dark dextro-blue. "You wait for me remember" Shepard can barely recognize her own voice, "y…you're buying, so you better wait"

He nods weakly, rough bone edges scraping against the skin of her clavicle, leaving a smeared streak of ash and blood. "Neevvv'r aa…looonnne?" he rasps lowly, the cybernetic glow of his eyes starting to dim.

"No" Shepard agrees softly "you're never alone." She cradles his ruined, twisted body in numb arms until he goes fully limp against her, and the hellish light flickers out in his tortured eyes. She lets herself scream then, a wordless howl of grief that tears at her throat until she can taste blood in her mouth and spots dance across her vision. She stays there until his blood has dried to a sticky black on her skin. Stays until the primal grief has settled into a lump of cold pain in her guts and the stars wheel across the sky toward a grey London dawn.

Shepard buries him in the ruins of an old brick building. She wishes it was somewhere better than this~somewhere warm; but private burials are a luxury denied to the survivors of the reaper invasion, and this somehow seems more dignified than the mass pit graves she could have consigned him to. Her hands are frozen and raw by the time she has settled the last brick in the makeshift cairn, but the pain is distant, as if it were happening to someone else. She wishes she could say something, but standing over the grave of her best friend, her only love, the words twisted and died in her throat. She mouths '_forgive me_' when her voice fails her, and forces her aching body to turn away.

She looks back only once, pressing the piece of his visor against her cracked lips as the pallid sickly light of sunrise slants across her eyes. "Just wait a little longer" she whispers, "just a little longer, then I'll meet you at that bar."


	6. Chapter 6

Three years, seventy days and twenty-three minutes later the last trailing reaper slips into the oily blackness of dark space. Their sudden absence in Shepard's mind shocks her from a restless sleep like ice water against her spine and she quests after that last distant echo, for the first time in years there is only blessed silence in her mind. The sudden quiet is unexpected, and she grasps after it like probing the space where a tooth used to be, but the distant sendings have tapered to nothing.

The flashing of the clock beside Shepard's cot reads 6:43, early enough that only the beginnings of light are rising into the chill winter sky. The floor is cold enough to numb her toes as she shrugs into her standard Alliance issue coveralls, as familiar as a second skin. For the first time in years her steps are light as they carry her to the door, the familiar cold lump that's been coiled inside her seems to ease, unfurling to spread through her system in a rush of heady adrenaline.

The hallways of the military compound she's called home for two years are mostly silent, a harried looking salarian trots past her, offering a terse greeting. The drab, utilitarian grey of the walls had seemed a depressing, leaden shroud before this morning~now they sparkle with light and possibility. The scientists here will be disappointed, Shepard thinks, there has been a lot of quiet, muttered talk of stasis bunkers…..of preserving Commander Shepard to become the savior of the next cycle. The mere thought of that makes her ill, to be like Javik, waking up 50 000 years in the future~lost and bitter in a world that was no longer hers.

The only part of Shepard's life that made each day bearable was the support of her scattered friends. They had supported her tirelessly through endless weeks and months of crippling grief, despite the fact that she had never told anyone about the events at the ruins of the conduit site. That sickening horror and guilt was her burden to bear...she could only hope they would understand her choice now. Understand and forgive.

A young Alliance marine is yawning his way through the last of a gate-shift when she passes. He snaps to attention when he recognizes her, blurting out a stuttered "C.. Commander Shepard! You're up early!"

He blinks in surprise as she breezes past, a genuine smile softening the bleak, scarred contours of her face. "Yeah" she tosses back over her shoulder, "I told a friend I'd meet him for a drink, don't want to keep him waiting." She can feel the guard's confused gaze on her back, but his respect for her rank and reputation keeps him silent.

Shepard decides to walk through Oldcity instead of taking an aircar. Her steps take her through the stirring streets toward the Conduit Memorial, footsteps light and glad~at if the weight of her choices was flaking away as she moved. It was hard to remember what it looked like then, all shattered wreckage and drifting ash; now it's a pristine park, lined with tall silver obelisks, carved with all the names of the fallen. A rising breeze stirs the flags that mark the still charred spot the beam had touched, a blur of vibrant colours from all the galaxies races: Human Alliance, Turian Hierarchy, Vol Protectorate….even the sigil of the Batarian Hegemony flew here, Councillor T'Soni had insisted on it.

Shepard props the twisted piece of metal at the base of the marker that bears his name. The visor support strut is worn smooth now, and Shepard's hands can remember every whorl and jag in the warped metal, she's never parted with it until now. A physical representation of everything she had lost, she had clung to it against a swirling morass of grief; but she doesn't need it now. She brushes her fingers once across the etching of his name, then turns away.

The sun is bathing the city in a cool winter light when she passes the skeletal remains of the old foundry district, the reclamation crews haven't made it this far yet~with relay construction a priority it may be years yet. Old warehouses and retail stores, full of gaping holes and empty windows crouch above cluttered streets. A family of vorcha look up from digging through the rubble as she passes; diving back into the refuse as soon as her footsteps fade.

Shepard follows the crumbling docks along the sluggish banks of a winter-sullen river, up onto the remains of an old bridge who's truncated arch rises high above the grey water. Looking back she can see the city spread out behind her, distant aircraft glint briefly in the rising sun as the Thames eddies far beneath her feet. Laughing she spreads her arms, and for a moment the brush of breeze feels like gentle talons in her hair, a brush of plating against the skin of her cheek, the pressure of an arm curling around her waist.

She looks back once more, they will be fine now, she thinks~she's bought them fifty thousand years of peace, its up to them to make it worth it.

Closing her eyes she remembers what Legion had said, moments before he collapsed, "I will go to them."

"Yes," Shepard whispers in gentle agreement, and steps forward.


End file.
